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WISDOM affiliates hold 2 powerful public events

The night before Halloween, Milwaukee's MICAH had an overflow crowd of
500 to celebrate big victories and hear from a governor candidate in
the state's close-fought race at their annual meeting. The same night,
Wisconsin’s Racine Interfaith Coalition and
Kenosha’s Congregations United to Serve Humanity held a joint meeting
of more than 200 to raise awareness of the multiple dimensions of
poverty and their impact on communities in the state of Wisconsin.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore,
and six state legislators pledged to meet twice per year with MICAH if
elected, or re-elected, Tuesday. The event also featured a powerful,
spoken-word performance by two young men who captured the reality and
the emotion of the challenge of violence, mass incarceration and
systematic deprivation of opportunity for young people in urban
Milwaukee.

Meanwhile in Racine, the group got fired up to make November 4 an
opportunity to talk about poverty in Wisconsin.

"Tell the candidates for next week's election that people of faith in
Wisconsin are scandalized by the reality of poverty in our state and we
demand action for change," Rabbi Dena Feingold told the audience.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin presented a slideshow on the realities of
poverty in the state, emphasizing a significant rise in the number of
children living in poverty over the past five decades and community
leaders underlined the specific challenges facing local communities,
supported by powerful testimonies from two local women struggling to
overcome those obstacles.

The call to action was a call to faithful citizenship, including the
commitment to vote on Tuesday and to work together to change the
systems that hold people, especially children, in poverty. Everyone in
attendance was invited to sign a Voter Pledge Card and to sign WISDOM’s
Faithful Citizenship open letter from people of faith to elected
leaders, challenging them to enact policy to address the root causes of
poverty.